January 29, 2010

Shovel Ready in Siberia: Stalin's Road of Bones

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Don't say your government's plans for "stimulus" and "recovery" can't get worse. They can. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to be building roads in Alaska.

The road runs for over two thousand kilometres through the wildest terrain of the Asian continent, connecting Magadan and Yakutsk, and making an enormous loop through the Siberian mountains in order to reach the hundreds of gold mines that once operated there.
Forced labour was used to construct every inch of this incredible project -- at first by inmates of labour camps, but later by the unfortunate denizens of the gulags that began springing up all over these near-uninhabitable provinces of Stalin's Soviet empire. Many were Russian POW's, banished to the region after being labelled German "collaborators". Many were Russian Christians who refused to renounce their faith under the Communist regime. Prisoners were chained except when they were working their twelve-hour shifts. Many died during transport alone, and thousands were shot by the officers for not working hard enough. And any worker who died during construction of the road was buried€™ where he fell -- survivors'€™ reports indicate that bodies were as common a sight as fallen logs.-- Stalin's Road of Bones

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Happy Workers Camp with Pictures of Dear Leader

Posted by Vanderleun at January 29, 2010 12:26 PM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

James 5: 4-6
4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

Posted by: Jewel at January 29, 2010 5:49 PM

They were Orthodox Christians. Apparently, Stalin told the church that he would murder any priest who held communion on Sunday. It took 2 years, but he managed to murder almost every single priest in the country. As soon as one would be killed, another would take his place. God bless their memories.

Posted by: ahem at January 29, 2010 9:43 PM

Imagine how these stories hearten the Commie spirit. They especially like those of Mao's Cultural Revolution. ism sure knows how to kill people.

Posted by: JD at January 30, 2010 4:54 PM

All this while that lying PoS Walter Duranty was telling the world via the New York Times what a workers' paradise the Soviet Union was. May his soul rot forever in Hell.

Posted by: waltj at January 30, 2010 5:07 PM

Not all of them were Orthodox. Many were Baptists and Pentecostalists. Georgy Vins was a Baptist pastor and poet, and his influence in the camps was profound.

Posted by: Jewel at January 30, 2010 7:59 PM

An informative (and highly readable) reference which describes the terrible fate of Americans--yes, Americans--who were forced to work in Kolyma is "The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia", by Tim Tzouliadis. Walter Duranty of The NYTimes is covered, as are clowns like FDR's VP Henry Wallace and Ambassador Joseph Davies. In fairness, it seems like many subsequent postwar administrations did little to determine the fate of these Americans who were in no uncertain terms destroyed by the Soviet state. Tzouliadis also makes mention of American servicemen who were lost in reconnaissance missions that likely perished in the camps. Also, anything by Robert Conquest, especially "Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps". For an incredible first-person description, see Alexander Dolgun's "An American in the Gulag". Read them and be informed, but also read them and weep.

Posted by: dhmosquito at January 31, 2010 8:37 PM

I also remember a book called "In from the Cold" about an American who was taken to the USSR by his father, but became part of the Soviet air force, setting an altitude record. He wouldn't renounce his American citizenship, so off to the gulag he went for years.

Posted by: mts1 at February 4, 2010 4:45 PM